2 Democrats compete for chance to take on Rep. Morgan Griffith in 9th District

The race to represent the sprawling 9th Congressional District starts with Tuesday’s primary between two Democrats, an Abingdon farmer who has challenged U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith in the past and a Blacksburg millennial.

Anthony Flaccavento clinched the Democratic nomination in 2012 during Republican Griffith’s first re-election bid, and Justin Santopietro has entered his first political race. Both candidates describe themselves as progressive Democrats who don’t believe Griffith, of Salem, is doing enough to address the district’s problems.

(Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday blocked the state of Indiana from enforcing a 2017 law allowing election officials to remove voters from the rolls if they were flagged by a controversial tracking system.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ruled in a legal challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Common Cause Indiana and other groups that the legislation violates the National Voter Registration Act and threatens to disenfranchise eligible voters.

A single-payer health care advocate in South Texas. A gun restriction supporter in Dallas. Cheerleaders in Arkansas and Iowa for public option health care.

Weeks into the primary season, Democrats’ midterm class is shaping up to test what liberal messages the party can sell to the moderate and GOP-leaning voters who will help determine control of the House after the November election.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is changing the way it processes voter file data to make the Democratic Party more competitive in 2020, Raffi Krikorian, the group's chief technology officer, told Axios.

Why it matters: Democrats are trying to fix what went wrong for them in 2016 by overhauling their entire tech operation, from data management to email strategies.

New Yorkers will head to the polls on Tuesday, June 26 to vote in Democratic and Republican congressional primary elections, determining which candidates will appear on the parties’ ballots in November’s general election. Not every one of New York’s 27 congressional districts is home to one or two primaries, but some districts are in the midst of competitive primary campaigns.

In New York City, where just one seat in the House of Representatives delegation is held by a Republican, there are several hotly-contested primaries, though only one race is expected to be competitive in the general election. The lone GOP-held seat is also the one where a tough general election is expected -- there is currently an intense primary on each side of the aisle in the 11th Congressional District, which includes Staten Island and a sliver of Southern Brooklyn and is represented by incumbent Rep. Dan Donovan.

Thanks to the election and reelection of controversial Republican Gov. Paul LePage with less than a majority of the vote, Maine is trying out a whole new method of voting on Tuesday.

Maine is the first state in the nation to use ranked-choice voting (also known as instant-runoff voting) in a statewide election. It’s largely seen as a rebuttal to LePage, who was elected in 2010 with less than 40 percent of the vote and reelected four years later with less than 50 percent. Besides being known for his obscenity-laced language, the governor has used his power to drag out the implementation of the state’s Medicaid expansion, which passed overwhelmingly on a ballot initiative last year.

National Redistricting Foundation, affiliate of Dem Redistrict announces it is backing suits to strike down some congressional districts in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana as unlawful racial gerrymanders in violation of the Voting Rights Act

San Francisco Board of Supervisors president London Breed (D) will become the first black woman to run the city on a permanent basis after her chief rival in last week's election conceded defeat Wednesday.

Breed, 43, won more first-place votes than any other candidate running in the June 5 primary, though San Francisco's ranked-choice voting system meant election officials had to reallocate second- and third-place votes from other candidates who were eliminated round by round.

Democrats should feel great about Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown’s chances of winning reelection in November and pretty darn good about their odds of retaking the governor’s mansion, according to two new polls on the Buckeye State’s marquee 2018 elections.

Quinnipiac University and Suffolk University (for the Cincinnati Enquirer) released back-to-back surveys on the Senate campaign between Brown and Republican Jim Renacci and the governor’s contest between Republican Mike DeWine and Democrat Richard Cordray.

Daily Kos Elections is pleased to announce our first set of Senate race ratings for the 2018 election cycle. Republicans currently hold the Senate by a 51-49 margin, meaning Democrats would need to pick up two seats to gain control of the chamber. Thanks to their strong performance the last two times this Senate class was up for election (2012 and 2006), Democrats are defending 26 seats, including two seats held by independents who caucus with the party. Republicans, by contrast, are defending just nine seats. (These figures include two special elections created by vacancies, one in Minnesota and the other in Mississippi.)

North Carolina is considering removing the last Saturday of early voting under a proposal that lawmakers say will bring uniformity to voting schedules across the state’s 100 counties.

The legislation, which has gathered support from both sides of the aisle, would put in place a 17-day early voting period that would operate on Monday-Friday from 7 a.m. - 7 p.m at voting sites across the state, according to The News and Observer.

Pennsylvania GOP moves to gerrymander court system that struck down their gerrymander of Congress

Incredible: After Pennsylvania's Supreme Court struck down the GOP's congressional gerrymander earlier this year and replaced it with a fair map, Republicans state senators have now responded by passing a constitutional amendment to gerrymander the court system itself. This amendment is designed to replace the Democratic majority on the high court with a Republican one, even if the GOP wins fewer votes statewide—as was the case with the state’s congressional delegation under the old map.

This development is the latest Republican move to undermine genuine electoral reform in Pennsylvania. Recently, GOP lawmakers grabbed hold of a widely supported proposal to create an independent redistricting commission and turned it on its head with an amendment that would give the legislature full power to determine who would sit on the panel.

Liuba Grechen Shirley has a faint scar on her right wrist that she uses to tell an engaging story about her brand of politics. She says she got the scar at age 3, during a period when her mother participated in the campaign to close the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island. When Grechen Shirley overheard that part of the campaign had been successful, she says she excitedly ran to tell her mother and accidentally put her hand through a glass door.

Now she has the scar, and she’s running an outsider, activist campaign for the Democratic nomination to take on Rep. Peter King, a Republican, whose Long Island district covers portions of Nassau and Suffolk Counties around 40 miles east of Manhattan.

The venue is Ohio's 12th Congressional District, where a special election to fill the seat vacated by Republican Rep. Pat Tiberi is scheduled for Aug. 7. Taking in all or part of seven counties around Columbus, the district backed Donald Trump by 11 points in 2016 and Mitt Romney by 10 before that.

UNT English professor Deb Armintor defeated local real estate firm owner Aaron “Fuzzy” Newquist on Saturday with 54.12 percent of the vote for the city council place 5 spot. The runoff election saw 13,235 total ballots cast.

Upon winning, Armintor said she had a grassroots victory, and the results showed democracy works.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum